If the NCAA prevails in an lawsuit pertaining to the use of college athletes' names and likenesses, it could take what it says is an usual step in anti-trust cases: It may try to recover millions of dollars in legal expenses from the plaintiffs' lead law firm, the NCAA's chief legal officer told USA TODAY Sports on Friday.

The case has been going on for more than four years and while U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken is scheduled to hold a key hearing Wednesday, there is no sign that the litigation will be concluded anytime soon. A trial is currently set for June 2014, but the NCAA and its co-defendants on Thursday asked Wilken to reset the case schedule in a way that would move the trial date back at least three more months.

The NCAA's lawyers have said in numerous court filings that the plaintiffs -- whose lead attorneys are from the firm Hausfeld LLP's offices in Washington, D.C. -- have made improper and unfair changes in their legal strategy. The NCAA's lawyers have said those changes have forced it and the association to spend considerably more time – and, by extension, the association's money and human resources -- on the case than they otherwise would have.

"Ordinarily, successful antitrust defendants do not recover fees. Here, the unfounded change in the theory may result in the NCAA seeking its fees from the Hausfeld firm," NCAA executive vice president and general counsel Donald Remy said via e-mail.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said Friday they had no comment on the matter.

In other types of legal cases, it is not unusual for the prevailing side to seek recovery of its costs.

The NCAA has an in-house legal staff at its headquarters in Indianapolis, but it routinely retains outside firms because of the volume and geographical spread of the lawsuits and other matters in which it is involved.

The name-and-likeness suit, for example, is being litigated in a federal court in Northern California, and there have been hundreds of filings and depositions in the case, in which the NCAA is being sued along with video-game maker Electronic Arts and the nation's leading collegiate trademark licensing and marketing firm, Collegiate Licensing Co.

During a telephone interview Friday, Remy said he could not provide a precise figure for the NCAA legal costs to this point. He said it is safe to say that they are in the millions of dollars, although "I don't actually think it's in the eight figures."

In response to a post-interview follow-up inquiry from USA TODAY Sports, he provided the e-mailed comment about potentially seeking to recover that money.

In its present form, the lawsuit is on behalf of roughly a dozen former athletes, including former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon. They allege that the defendants violated anti-trust law by conspiring to fix at zero the amount of compensation athletes can receive for the use of their names, images and likenesses in products or media while they are in school and by requiring athletes to sign forms under which they relinquish in perpetuity all rights pertaining to the use of the names, images and likenesses in ways including TV contracts, rebroadcasts of games, and video game, jersey and other apparel sales.

If the case is certified as a class action, it likely would bring thousands of current and former college football and men's basketball players into the case and potentially place billions of dollars in damages at stake. It also could fundamentally alter how football and men's basketball players are compensated for playing those sports in college.